


Its Own Shape

by thenewbuzwuzz



Series: The Scrap Heap of Life [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Gen, Greyromantic Character, Quoiromantic Character, Run-On Sentences, Shippy Gen, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewbuzwuzz/pseuds/thenewbuzwuzz
Summary: These are all the shippier bits of my incomplete Willow x Katrina AU. They're not very shippy.
Relationships: Willow Rosenberg & Katrina Silber
Series: The Scrap Heap of Life [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979762
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	1. Coloring in the Margins

**Author's Note:**

> Beware: snippets of a permanent WIP.  
> OP does not take constructive criticism on this work.  
> Thank you to my excellent beta thewiggins for reading the first, perhaps almost unrecognizably different version of the story and believing in the ship. This new version has not been betaed.  
> The chapter titles are from "Neither/Nor" by Moses Sumney because I could.

I've missed talking to you, Xan. Really talking, about how we really are. Not just arranging who'll bring the donuts to the Scooby meeting, or discussing monster strategy.

It used to be, you knew me better than anyone else. It's harder to know myself, too, when there are things I don't speak.

Anyway, that's why we're here. You with the powers of Payday Man, for sugary goodness -- oh, but I want to know how you're doing with Anya and everything, really. I've missed so much Xander stuff. But I promised you the inside scoop on the whole deal with Katrina and how I accidentally started worshiping an Egyptian goddess. All questions shall be answered... ...except for that one, jeez. It's not like that. Give me a moment, and I'll try and tell you how it is.

So, the first day of summer break, I was... ...yeah, okay, close. Good guess. I kind of was packing for college already. But not _packing_ packing! There's this trick for packing for camping trips, where you're supposed to start making a checklist early on, so that when time comes to actually pack, you don't forget anything. So that's what I was doing, making my checklist. Going through all my things and deciding what I would take to the dorm.

And I found this shoebox under my bed, with stuff from junior year. A braid of my old, long hair that I made the hairdresser give me to keep, and some other things, mementos -- oh, from Miss Calendar's desk. And such. It was just one thing, it's not like I looted her entire desk. I think she would have wanted me to have a little keepsake. It's this cat pendant, actually. You might have noticed us using it in the ritual for Seshat.

Yeah, and then I found all those bits of Ted in the box. Yes, I kept them. I mean, I already had them when you guys made it so clear you never wanted to hear about them ever. They were just kinda... there - I never did anything with them. Eventually, I forgot. And then, of course, in the last year of high school, I was much more interested in magic, so that made them extra irrelevant. Just, you know, one more weird thing that I'd been into, back when I thought that haircut was a good idea.

Right, so, first day of summer. I was full of enthusiasm and energy, on the first day of the rest of our lives, and I decided those bits o'Ted had been lying around long enough. I'd sell them on eBay. I figured if someone actually wanted them, I could use some money for spell supplies. Eye of newt ain't cheap!

And that would have been the end of the story, except that Katrina... she found that eBay auction, and she had questions. Katrina does not back down when she has questions, as I quickly found out. It's one of the things that... that makes her so good. At sciencey stuff.

So she was all like, _tell me about those pressure sensors_ this and _how good are the gas transducers_ that. I couldn't exactly say, "They're so good that Buffy's robot stepdad was able to smell when the mini pizzas were done baking." Right, those mini pizzas were a thing of legend. Which is kind of the point here -- it took some advanced technology to do that. And I had underestimated how advanced. Say, it turns out that most companies who make robot parts don't really do precise pressure sensors. They've got things to tell a robot when it has bumped into an obstacle, but nowhere close to what you'd need in order to know how hard the robot hand is holding or pressing something. And I think Ted must have used a lot of that for the cooking, just to cut the ingredients and shape the dough. Also, some of his parts for motion control were out of this world. Do you realize what it means that he was better than a Slayer at mini golf? Yeah, Terminator level. We don't live in a movie. Do we? Would we know?

Anyway, the point is, Katrina was really into all this, and she wanted many details, so we got to emailing back and forth a lot. And that made me remember what I'd liked about these things, too. And more than that -- she had some absolutely brilliant ideas about how to use some of the parts. Thoughts I'd never even considered.


	2. The Romance of the Undefined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, "The Scrap Heap of Life", v2, was planned as a string of Willow monologues to different listeners. I thought I would comb through all of them and make sure that the sequence of events made sense, and make sure they follow each other logically. But no. We're just jumping to the next piece I've got that I like, ish. Willow is supposed to be talking to Buffy here.

Romance-wise, you mean? Not much... not really... it's kind of a yes and no. I'm sure you and Riley got up to more noteworthy things, even back then, but fair enough! It wouldn't be girl talk without dishing on my... love life. And I have really missed having girl talk time with you. I know everything was happening a lot this year, but I'm so glad we agreed never to not talk again, especially now that the semester is over.

So, um, sure. I can tell you about that time I went to Katrina in shiny leather pants and she thought I was hitting on her, going by the look on her face. (And I thought so too, and I was the one who freaked out.)

It was right before Oz... left.

No, I'm okay.

I really got those pants for Oz. But they failed to work their magic on him, and then I kinda forgot about them.

I had planned to go to the Wicca group that day, but Katrina suggested I could come over to Dutton and see her robot kitten, and, honestly, that just sounded less stressful after the day I'd had. So I did that.

She didn't say anything much, really. Just something about feeling underdressed, and she just gave the shiny pants this little frown.

The kitten was very cool, so there was that. Katrina had given it bend sensors so it could use its whiskers just like a normal cat. It had some trouble with balance -- that happens a lot with robots, walking is hard -- and Katrina wanted my input on what to do about that. Apparently what she had from Ted only worked for two legs.

The stupid pants distracted me from the good stuff, though. Once I'd been reminded that I had them on, I felt like I was, all the time, pretending to be Vampire Willow again. Exactly. "Look at my outfit!" Isn't it wild how much it messes with thinking if you're also, in parallel, thinking about how your butt looks? I don't know, it's probably different for you, Buffy -- you usually aim to look great, and you know how to do it, so I bet it takes less attention. But I usually dress to feel comfy or to cheer myself up. And these were, very specifically, well, pants that I picked for one purpose, and that purpose was to make Oz wanna... you know. To remind him we were together and he could get all his sexy right there.

So, at the back of my mind, a little voice was going, "I wonder if they're working. Oh god, what if they're working?"

I had _thought_ that I hadn't meant anything by coming there in the pants, but I couldn't forget how Professor Walsh had gone on and on in the previous week's lecture about the Id and how we all are after, you know, snuggle times. "We always want them, and we want them all the time."

I had hidden motives, I was sure of it.

You have a point. There may have been something off about her theories if she ended up building something like Adam, which proceeded to kill her. A small flaw in the lens somewhere. A smidgen of wrong.

But, back in Katrina's lab, the little voice in my head nagged, "Should I even be here?" It seemed so wrong to wear these pants for someone else and hang out here with someone else and have fun while Oz was suffering in his cage.

It didn't help the situation at all that Katrina had started looking good at some point. The first time I met her, she looked -- nice enough, I guess. Tall. Brown hair. Nothing that really stood out to me. But now that I had talked to her for a few months, over the 'Net, I saw the humor in the lines of her lips, the intelligence and warmth in her eyes... The way she's always ready to make her voice heard, brimming with fire.

You ever get that, Buffy? That someone looks like nothing in particular when you first meet them, but then as you get to know them they become pretty? The opposite of secretly being a vampire and breaking out the bumpies.

There was much guilt, of course, after the not-date with the pants. So much flogging and punishing, in fact, that I swore off the whole robot thing for a bit and didn't talk to Katrina for several weeks and decided to focus on my magic studies.

But I never did check out that Wicca group. The next two days they had orientation meetings, I was very distracted with the whole Veruca fiasco, and the next month I forgot about it. And joining later in the year would have been weirder and weirder. I wonder what they're up to. Maybe I'll check them out next semester.


	3. In the Valley of the Sure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skipped a whole bunch of stuff that I never managed to make work, and here's a chunk that I think almost works. Parts of it are close to feeling right. Other parts, not so much. In this chunk, Willow is writing an email to Katrina, I guess?  
> I have no real idea when this email would be happening and whether the timing of events mentioned makes the slightest sense, so let's just assume it doesn't.

Hi, Katrina,

I'm typing this in a coffee shop, and they've got some vinyl records for decoration. Reminds of how we defeated the Gentlemen. I honestly think I would have just gone along with Giles' claim that only a real human voice would do, without examining the _why_ and the _how_ , if I hadn't been in touch with you. It was brilliant how you thought to ask - but how is a human voice different from a recording? And what kind of recording would they have tried before? I can't believe I didn't wonder before talking to you. Giles even told us his source was a fairy tale. Which pretty much guaranteed that it came before the days of record players that can make loud and clean sounds at high frequencies.

Saving the town with pure cleverness was _so_ cool that when I overheard someone at a party calling me a nerd the next week, I just thought, boy oh boy, that guy never knew anything in high school, and he doesn't know anything now, huh.

That was the day when Oz phoned. I told him about our super cool adventure with the Gentlemen and some of our experiments, this and that, and he thought I was in love. And I thought, well, he knows me pretty well. I didn't mean to talk about you for an hour, I just thought he'd want to hear how Giles' records saved the day. The worst I expected from that conversation was that bringing up “amps” (as the cool kids say) would be awkward.

I honestly thought I was just telling him about things I'd been up to - you know, how you were helping the Scoobs sometimes now, like with figuring out how the blaster works and building that transmitter to mess with the GPS signals of the Initiative. I told him about building Miss Kitty, how it was nice having this... living thing, almost, grow between you and me. I may have mentioned that you're brilliant, which is true, and that I feel like I can talk to you about things nobody else would understand, which is also a part of a truth.

And Oz told me to be with the person I love.

That was lovely of him, but he got only one of the truths. I love him. I love you. I love all my friends and magic and science and funky T-shirts.

After that phone call, I couldn't sleep, and I binge-read “The Four Loves” by C. S. Lewis and took notes, which cleared up absolutely nothing, and finally I fell asleep at dawn.

And on the bus drive to meet you the next day - because I wasn't going to cancel our meeting, and I was late and what if you thought I wouldn't show, what if you thought I wasn't taking it seriously, what if you didn't know that you come first (well, after world saveage, but since you're helping with world saveage now it's all the same)? - I kept thinking, oh my god, is this a date? are we dating? am I missing something?

Anyway, as you know, unfortunate conclusions were jumped to. I got all worried about whether you knew I cared, and I kind of did the whole red dress, Barry White routine -- metaphorically, I mean. The smoochies have just always seemed like a good way to get that kind of message across. And you got the wrong message - which I thought was the right message, but really it was not.

See, if I'd known what kind of day you'd had... In my defense, you kind of are objectively wonderful, so how was I to know that other people can fail to notice? I took it as read that I'm into your mind. Who wouldn't be? The poopheads at Dutton College, apparently.

Yes, I should have stuck around and explained. But it took me a couple of hours even to get what you had really said, that all you said was "I thought you, at least, were interested in me for me."

All I would have had to say was you thought correctly. But I was so embarrassed about putting you through the whole ordeal of attempted kissage that I walked out in a daze and didn't stop walking for a good while. And then I had to backtrack to the bus station to get home. Beating myself up the whole way.

Anyway, what I mean to say is...

[Saved as draft]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna explain what would have happened between this and the next snippet, but I don't know.  
> Maybe Willow did finish and send the email. Maybe she didn't actually contact Katrina for long enough that she was starting to think that Katrina had gone off to South America to participate in an engineering project for charity. Maybe Katrina just showed up at a Scooby meeting, and she had researched Seshat. Maybe at some point Katrina sat Willow down with the Five Factor Model of Relationships and asked a lot of questions, but only ones Willow could answer.  
> I do know they met again and did a whole awesome ritual and won season 4, and they kept doing fun technopagan experiments afterwards.


	4. I Fell in Love with the In-Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're skipping most of the stuff that I posted in _"*hacker voice* I'm In"_ , and this would have been part of the final section of the story, where Willow would have been addressing Buffy again.  
> Mostly kept this bit because I thought it would be cute to use star imagery like canon Tillow has, but different.

We went stargazing at Katrina's college once, before we found out about Seshat... no, I don't mean it was a date. I mean, I don't know. Maybe you could call it a date if you wanted. What does it matter?

I wanted to tell you about the stars. You know how I have an old star chart that I memorized when I was little? I can name all the constellations on it. So, I looked into the telescope, and there were so many more stars than I'd ever seen before. It bothered me that I couldn't name them or connect them into constellations. I tried to look up one of the new stars afterwards, and I found out it was probably named 3C 273. Probably - I wasn't sure. But in the end, the name was just some letters and numbers.

At the time, I felt like I was getting nowhere. Now, I think maybe there's nowhere to be getting. The stars didn't stop being beautiful because I didn't know how to connect the dots. Even when I don't see them, I know they are shining there, up above everything, and I couldn't argue with their luminous silence if I wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> "It doesn’t have to be romantic even if it is a bit. It’s whatever it ends up being. It’ll make its own shape."  
> \- anonymous respondent in Coyote's [Romantic Ambivalence Survey](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/805237)
> 
> Usually I like constructive criticism, but not for this work, thank you.


End file.
